Enjoying a ride on your motorcycle is a brilliant experience, until something happens that makes you lose control. It could be a distracted driver who swerves into your lane or turns abruptly in front of you. Maybe you hit an oily patch in the road. Whatever the reason, losing control of your bike can mean suffering serious injuries.
With the potential for broken bones, traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries, people may think of “road rash” as just a minor inconvenience. However, road rash can be quite painful and can lead to serious complications, including infection, permanent disfigurement and scarring.
The right safety gear can reduce your risk of road rash
While wearing protective gear in the summer may feel stifling, it is still your safest bet for protection. Getting on a motorcycle without a helmet and full body coverage could mean you end up suffering worse injuries in a crash than you would sustain while wearing the proper gear.
Bikers wear leather in no small part to protect their skin from the consequences of falling off their bike or sliding while on their bikes. Keeping your arms and legs completely covered is the best way to reduce the friction you will experience if you hit the pavement during a collision or crash. Of course, if you are traveling at high speeds, protective gear may not protect you from all harm.
Road rash is a potentially serious injury, not just an inconvenient one
Road rash is basically what happens when your skin gets scraped off by the pavement or other hard surface as you move across it. Any place where your skin gets broken presents a risk for infection, which poses a significant risk for bikers.
Although you may receive medical care immediately after your crash, you may not be able to maintain the same level of cleanliness in your own home. It is of utmost importance that you ensure that the skin affected by road rash is always kept clean and sanitary. You may need to continue to disinfect it routinely to ensure that infection does not set in.
Even if you managed to avoid an infection, the scars left behind by road rash could result in permanent disfigurement. This is particularly true for scars on your forearms, hands, neck and face. Proper treatment could even require skin grafting. If your accident was the result of another driver’s mistake or distraction, you may be able to seek compensation from that driver for the medical costs associated with treating your serious road rash injuries.
